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Santa Ragione's VHS rewinds movie-selection sims at Fantastic Arcade
VideoHeroeS is a good fit for Fantastic Arcade, the annual indie game exhibition tied to Fantastic Fest, a genre film showcase held in Austin, Texas. VHS is a game about the nostalgia of picking out movies, on VHS, in the 90s from the local rental store – players are the store clerk and have to find the right tape for each customer. Customers have specific demands, such as, "I hate movies. They suck. Give me anything that is not a movie," and questions including, "Do you still have that martial arts movie with the screaming guy? You know, when he says, "Kiiaiii!" I played VHS during GDC Europe in Cologne, Germany, and it's more than a simple point-and-click method of movie selection. It's a physics game in the way that Octodad uses physics, flinging films around the carefully organized shelves to float above the floor in a jumbled, chaotic pile. This adds to the frenzy of helping customers as their demands pile up. As the clerk, you only get paid if you find a film to meet the customer's needs. It's a joy not only to pick the correct movies, but also to look at all that old-school box art. Currently, VHS uses actual movies and their box arts, but if the game takes off outside of Fantastic Arcade, developer Santa Ragione has a plan: commission famous and talented artists to design boxes inspired by classic titles, mimicking them enough for players to get a sense of each film's contents, but not enough so the devs get sued. As a bonus, this avenue would create tons of original artwork within the game, which could be an extra selling point. Anyone going to Fantastic Arcade in Austin on September 19 - 26, check out VHS – and please be kind, rewind.
These 8 Fantastic Arcade Spotlight games get custom arcade cabinets
"Going big" to Fantastic Arcade – the annual indie showcase in Austin, Texas – means building custom arcade cabinets for eight indie games. This year, the Spotlight games getting the full-cabinet treatment are Samurai Gunn, Wasteland Kings, Goblet Grotto, Panoramical, QED, Starwhal: Just the Tip, No Brakes Valet and Towerfall. "Fantastic Arcade's Spotlight games are selected by a hard-to-define quality we like to call 'arcadiness,'" says Juegos Rancheros co-founder Wiley Wiggins. The Spotlight games were chosen by Wiggins, Adam Saltsman and Brandon Boyer, the founders of Austin indie collective Juegos Rancheros, and Arcade Technical Director Joshua Fields. Towerfall has been a convention and Ouya favorite of ours for a while, while Wasteland Kings was just outed today as the next game from Vlambeer. It's an action roguelike starring mutants as they attempt to capture the Wasteland throne, and it's "a happy place where weird shit happens all the time," Vlambeer tells us. These games are part of more than 20 total coming to Fantastic Arcade, an offshoot of genre film showcase Fantastic Fest. We've been impressed with Fantastic Arcade's offerings in the past, and this year is poised to please as well.
